There aren’t many other stars in the NBA who have had it worse than Russell Westbrook over these past few years.
After finally waving the white flag on his mission to bring a Chip to OKC, he joined a Rockets team with his former teammate, James Harden, with hopes that he might bring success to his new basketball home.
Instead, his first season there ended with much drama, and it wasn’t long before the Rockets decided to blow it up completely.
He suited up for the Wizards the following season, only to find that, despite a rather admirable individual performance, the team was just not cut out to make any kind of noise in the East.
He’s finally in a place now where his talent might start to get appreciated, but it doesn’t mean his reputation will ever fully recover.
In a recent ESPN ranking of the NBA’s Top 100 players, for example, Russ was controversially placed 29th — much to the chagrin of Kendrick Perkins, who blasted his own network for placing Westbrook below Ben Simmons.
“Who in the hell is doing these rankings? Make me understand this.
How could you watch last season and watch what Russell Westbrook did when the Washington Wizards were about 15 games below .500 and Westbrook averaging another triple-double, getting them to the postseason, and you have the audacity to put Ben Simmons ahead of him?
This man just keeps getting disrespected. Russell Westbrook was tearing the league up once he got healthy the second part of the season. Night and day from Ben Simmons, head and shoulders above Ben Simmons.
No disrespect to Ben Simmons because I think he’s a great player, he just wasn’t great last year.”
29th is a pretty low ranking for a former MVP coming off yet another season in which he averaged a triple-double. It’s especially weird that Simmons ranks ahead of him in light of his awful and embarrassing playoff performance,
Despite Westbrook’s shortcomings when it comes to shooting and defending, a strong case can be made that he’s being wildly underappreciated by the community today.
Leave it to Perk to give the guy a little recognition.
